Making Sense of Suicide Missions

Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-0-19-927699-8
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 392 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 757 g

Suicide attacks have become the defining act of political violence of our age. From New York City to Baghdad, from Sri Lanka to Israel, few can doubt that they are a terrifying feature of an increasing number of violent conflicts. Since 1981, around 30 organizations throughout the world - some of them secular and others affiliated to radical Islam - have carried out more than 600 suicide missions. Although a tiny fraction of the overall number of guerrilla and terrorist attacks occurring in the same period, the results have proved significantly more lethal.

This book is the first to shed real light on these extraordinary acts, and provide answers to the questions we all ask. Are these the actions of aggressive religious zealots and unbridled, irrational radicals or is there a logic driving those behind them? Are their motivations religious or has Islam provided a language to express essentially political causes? How can the perpetrators remain so lucidly effective in the face of certain death? And do these disparate attacks have something like a common cause?

For nearly three years, this team of internationally distinguished scholars has pursued an unprejudiced inquiry, investigating organizers and perpetrators alike of this extraordinary phenomenon. Close comparisons between a whole range of cases raise challenging further questions: if suicide missions are so effective, why are they not more common? If killing is what matters, why not stick to 'ordinary' violent means? Or, if dying is what matters, why kill in the process?

Making Sense of Suicide Missions contains a wealth of original information and innovative analysis which further our understanding of this chilling feature of the contemporary world in radically new and unexpected ways.

Zielgruppe

Scholars and students of Politics, Sociology, Comparative Politics, and Political Violence, especially those with an interest in suicide missions and terrorism, anyone keen to understand the motivations behind recent suicide bombings

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gambetta, Diego

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Konflikt- und Friedensforschung, Rüstungskontrolle, Abrüstung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Terrorismus, Religiöser Fundamentalismus
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Friedens- und Konfliktforschung
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Foreword

- 1: Peter Hill: Kamikaze 1943-45

- 2: Stephen Hopgood: Tamil Tigers 1987-2002

- 3: Luca Ricolfi: Palestinians 1981-2003

- 4: Stephen Holmes: Al Quaeda, September 11, 2001

- 5: Michael Biggs: Dying Without Killing: Self-Immolations 1963-2002

- 6: Stathis Kalyvas and Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca: Killing Without Dying: The Absence of Suicide Missions

- 7: Jon Elster: Motivations and Beliefs in Suicide Missions

- 8: Diego Gambetta: Can We Make Sense of Suicide Missions?

Über Autor(innen)

Diego Gambetta, Professor of Sociology and Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford